Month: September 2010

Is Dissent Good for the Church?

matt b redmond2 Comments

“The reality is we need dissent. Without dissent society would come to a halt; we wouldn’t change or create or innovate,” says Carsten de Dreu, a professor at the University of Amsterdam who specializes in the role of dissent within organizations. But “these dissenters are despised or ignored or persecuted by the majority.”

A few days ago, a friend of mine sent me an article.  It is called “In Praise of Dissent.”

She said she thought of me.

Dissent is tricky. In others, it is usually only laudable in hindsight…after they been shown to be right. And I rarely even like my own dissent. Sometimes I wish I could just get with the program. And the guilt of feeling outside the circle of assent when holding tightly to a dissenting opinion is rarely pleasant.

However, the whole time I am reading, thoughts on the need for dissent in the church, local and Universal are flying through my mind with sonic boom inflicting speed. Not because the dissenter is always right. But, for the very reason, we pastors could easily fall victim to seeing dissenters as only troublemakers. Blinded by our visions, dreams and possibly groupthink, ignoring dissent becomes the shortest distance between two points. Veering off this line extends meetings and derails progress.

So what do you think? Is there a place for dissent in the church? Where? What are it’s limits? Dangers? Benefits? Do you have any stories where dissent was helpful?

10 Albums More Than Albums

matt b redmond3 Comments

Over one thousand albums. Granted I don’t listen to all of those albums regularly and still less very often at all, if ever. But there are a few, a precious few, which I go to often. To call them favorites, would not do. They are more. They are the warmth of a couch and a cup of hot tea on a snowy winter’s day. They are the first warm rays of spring which tighten the skin on into cool night’s laughing with friends. They are the smiles of Christmas and the tears of Good Friday. They are far more than albums of music, they hold memories and heat and light and ideas and thoughts and concerns and moments which echo through the notes…they are not entertainment.

I am sure there are more. But below I have listed ten.

1. Billie Holiday, Jazz Masters 12 – Some realities defy the ability to be explained. Billie Holiday’s effect on me stretches back 10 years and feels like the grip of a warm embrace. My favorite voice, this album is the reason it is part of the furniture of my mind. It starts with “What A Little Moonlight Can Do” and then you’re taken into the depths of the American heart.

2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago – Some albums, you listen to, others you swim into the depths of. This album never gets old. Of all my albums, it sits in winter solitude. I cannot listen to it without feeling the whiteness of Wichita snow. There is no album like it.

3. Van Morrison, Hymns to the Silence – Many nights were spent driving through the hills and vales of Birmingham as a young single guy, listening to this album. Gas was cheap then and I would just drive around for hours, for solitude and release. Van was a regular companion. Emotions will get the better of me, if I’m not careful, when listening to ‘On Hyndford Street.” A friend of mine speculated that Van was after beauty like many were after fame and money. This album is full of what he was looking for.

4. Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A’Changin – The first time this album hit my ears, I was driving down highway 31 in Hoover…not far from where I now live. Usually you don’t want to turn up just a guy and a guitar and a harmonica. But he sings with such power, volume feels right. If this was the only album he ever recorded, he would still be a favorite. As it is, I named my son after him.

5. John Coltrane, A Love Supreme – While I was studying in St. Louis, Jazz got a hold of me. Previously it was interesting, but then I started to go deep and wanted to hear more and marinate in most of it. I remember calling a number of stores before I found one which carried this album. So we drove up  170 and when my wife saw the cover of the CD, she wondered why it cost so much for 3 songs. We drove straight from there to Kirk and Debbie’s and listened to it as we ate and drank and laughed. A wonderful album.

6. Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska – It’s an album of novels, full of americana grit and glory. Stories of what was, is and could never be told masterfully. You can feel the midwestern winds pelting your face on deep Winter nights among the words. When no other album suits, Nebraska more than does.

7. Diana Krall, The Look of Love – All my favorite albums involve a place. My wife gave me this album  on my 30th birthday week. It was a rainy, cold, late October Sunday morning. When she sings these Bossa Nova inspired songs, I can close my eyes and see my wife sitting next to me in our Honda as we drive to Church listening. The title track is mesmerizing.

8. Patty Griffin, 1000 Kisses – Another album I bought with my wife in St. Louis. We listened to this till we knew the silence in between the songs by heart. Patty could sing the phonebook and I would buy it. Almost all of my papers in Seminary were written with her angelic voice coursing through my headphones. When she toured supporting this album, I headed up her street team when she came and played at The Pageant on Delmar. Lush, like a southern mountainside in the throes of Spring, no notes should be ignored. “Be Careful” is one of the most powerful songs I’ve ever heard.

9. Andrew Peterson, Love and Thunder – I’d have never bought this one if I had not seen him in concert supporting it. After at least one hundred listens, I can safely say, there are no albums by believers which move me like this one. When he sings, “You sent that telegraph to tell her that you missed her…” geez, there are no words. ‘The Silence of God’ and ‘After the Last Tear Falls’ may be the most appropriately juxtaposed songs I have.

10. Emmylou Harris, Spyboy – One hour for lunch spent at a used CD store on highway 31 in Hoover yielded a copy. When I returned to my work, I put it on and I remember as she began to sing, putting my head down on my desk because it was so wonderful. My wife knows I have a kind of crush on her and she is OK with that. OK enough to wait outside the Ryman in an alley hoping and then procuring an autograph. This is my favorite live album. Period.

OK, so what are some of your go to albums?

Going ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ on ‘Blue Like Jazz’

matt b redmond7 Comments

Update: Don actually contacted me through Twitter and thanked me for the post. He was very gracious, which is not surprising. My goal was not to have contact with him but to truly apologize to him and get a little closure on something which had haunted me. His kind reply did the trick, for which I am thankful.

(The following should be read in light of yesterday’s post…)

“Crap, I’m going to have to apologize to him. Publicly.”

My particular sin of choice is to be wrong, know it and then not want to admit it. Call it insecurity. Call it self-protection. I am not sure what it is besides that ancient fortress of the human soul, pride. I hate everything about it. Well, not everything. There is that liberating moment of admitting when I admit I am wrong. You know, when you finally say it out loud. Wait. That feels pretty good and really awful…in a John Cougar “Hurts So Good” kinda way.

All the young people I had discipled in youth ministry were reading Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Them and their parents. Their Dentists and their Hair-Stylists. And everyone for that matter. I could not go anywhere without hearing about this book. This could not be good. Because he was not endorsed by those I read the most, is how I knew, thank you very much. So I decided I did not like this book long before I even set my eyes on a physical copy.

The first time I saw a copy, I was spending some of my book budget on Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, Vol. 1. As I walked up to the cash register at the small independent bookstore in the small Mississippi town in which I lived, there it sat.  It sat there in all it’s best-selling non-Reformed, wishy-washy theological glory. Without a doubt, it’s proximity to the cash register would cause unsuspecting shoppers temptation to spontaneously buy such claptrap.

So I bought it.

Why did I buy a book I had already gone “Green Eggs and Ham” on?  I couldn’t very well write a negative review of a book I had not read. So I had to read it. And then put it on my “bad book” shelf. I can actually remember the guy who sold it to me, asking me if I had read it yet, and though my answer was “no,” I wanted to make sure he knew I was not interested in how much he liked it. I was also mad because I loved the cover and the title. But Hell’s Bells, Brian McLaren defaced the back cover with his recommendation. How could I, for the love?

So I read it, having already decided to hate it. Green eggs and ham, man. Green eggs and freaking ham. But deep down, even as read it and found reasons to not like it, a seed took root. I could not ignore how well-written it was. There was so much to like. Full of humor and honesty and great sentences, I read it quickly. If I had been fully honest, I would have admitted how wrong I was. But I decided to blog on it, anyway.

Sadly, I do not remember everything I said. More sadly, the internet and the ‘2nd most popular blog among Christians’ do remember the salient points. Go ahead. Take a look…. Hopefully everyone thinks that Matt Redmond is the worship leader.

Humility-coated arrogance wants me to think it does not matter. He probably has not seen it and even if he did, he would not care. But the fact is I committed a grave error doing what I did. And the error/sin is no less real even if no one ever saw what I thoughtlessly wrote. I not only prejudged him and his book, I also reviewed it for anyone and everyone to see after doing so. What is worse is that I never acknowledged the seed. Deep down I knew it was a good book and have known so after years of thinking about what he wrote. I have grown to like it a lot over the years though it was just 2 days ago I picked it up to read again.

The only way Don Miller would know I exist is most likely by reading that post. But here it goes anyway…

“Don, I am sorry. For all the reasons above, I apologize. Please forgive me.”

There. Now I feel better. In a John Cougar sort of way.


"This Is A Must Read" and Other Ridiculous Ideas About Books

matt b redmond2 Comments

When you pretty much get paid to leave a job in ministry, inevitably there comes a crisis of belief. And as you emerge on the other side, dripping with the mire of failure and loss, reality comes into focus as you look through tears and sweat. The effects are myriad. Legion. Over the past year, one of these effects has been how I look at books. Since books have been precious friends since my earliest days, it is no wonder this would be the case.  The effect has been to see how we often think about books wrongly.

For example, far too often we think of a book as “The Way” when we should be thinking of books as something to help us on the way. This thinking is betrayed when our opinion of people is lessened because they did not like a particular book we thought should help everyone in Christian growth. I mean, this bundle of bound pages is a “must read.” Right? Or when they love a book and we thought they should have thought it should have been bad for them.

But what I notice more than anything is our need to qualify our love for a book or an author by saying, “Of course, I do not agree with everything he/she says.” The “of course” is misleading because, let’s face it, we always feel the need to add it. “Of course” means “it goes without saying.” But we say it anyway because we want to make sure we do not get colored with someone’s theological errors, methodology, etc., though we want to make sure others know we benefited from the book or author’s work. A little.

Actually it’s refreshing when this does not happen. My wife and I have some friends who love and have benefited from a particular author’s books. He is a little, ehem, controversial in my world. So one night while eating dinner in their home, they told me they loved his books. I sat there and I waited for what seemed like an eternity for the, “Of course…” but it never came. I didn’t know how to respond, I probably stuttered trying to sound diplomatic. But I’m glad they did not feel the need to qualify their affection for this author and the books he had labored over.

And I’m glad because we should dispense with the whole thing. We are Christians, right? We believe everyone has a sin problem. Everyone includes authors. So, no one’s book is the book to end all books. Yes, even John Piper and Tim Keller.  No decent author feels this way. We tend to think a book is a “must read” even when the author of the book does not. The fact that we would disagree with something in a book someone wrote should…well, go without saying. Literally. (Actually, we need to admit that we even disagree with The Book, The Bible, sometimes. Not because it is wrong but because we are natural rebels.)

The real danger comes when you feel the book you love could not have error, either because of your devotion to its message or because of your devotion to the author. It’s as if the problem of sin ceased to be a factor in the writing and editing of a particular work.

Maybe we should relax. Read books and be helped by what we can. Sure we can disagree with someone and still love their book just as we disagree with a friend and love them and benefit from their life. Let books help you on your way without feeling the necessity to live as if any book is the way. Because if you don’t, you will say something ridiculous like, “This is a must read.”